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'4.48 Psychosis' review or 'How many syllables in Die?'

4.48 Psychosis – Sarah Kane/Philip Venables

Lyric Hammersmith, 24th May 2016

The first time I read Sarah Kane’s ‘4.48 Psychosis’, it felt like an illicit
act – as if I had stolen something that should never have found its way out into
the open. The writing in Psychosis – Kane’s final play before she committed
suicide – is so exposed and so personal that to read it is to steal a tiny
piece of her soul. I have never seen a production that matches the intensity of
reading this piece in a quiet and empty room. In fact, I’m still not convinced
that 4.48 Psychosis works on stage at all. There’s something about this lonely
and jittery dance through the black spaces of a depressive’s soul that demands
privacy; put this delicate and wrought piece of theatre on stage and it risks
shattering into a thousand ashen pieces.

I’ll tell you what, having
seeing this new operatic take on 4.48 Psychosis – written by Philip Venables
(the ROH’s and Guildhall’s composer-in-residence) and with the libretto lifted
directly from the text – I’m more convinced than ever that Kane’s play doesn’t
belong on stage. Or, if it does, we still haven’t found a way to do it justice.
How to stage a piece that comes from somewhere buried so deep in a playwright’s
soul? It’s a hell of a dilemma but layering operatic voices and an orchestral accompaniment
over the top isn’t – really isn’t – the answer. This is actually a pretty brave
and striking composition from Venables - full of weird colours and clangs – but
it isn’t Kane’s voice. This isn’t 4.48 Psychosis. All the simplicity and
fragility of Kane’s text has been trampled over and we’ve been left with –
nothing.

By the end of this brawny
production I didn’t want to look at the stage, listen to the music or even read
the text, which is insistently projected up against the white box set
throughout. I longed to be elsewhere. Most disturbingly of all, I became
embarrassed by Kane’s text and profoundly uncertain of its worth. Blasted up
against the set like that – stretched out by the singers and hammered out by
the CHROMA ensemble musicians – Kane’s words began to look crass. They lost
their delicate magic. I started to loathe Kane’s writing; they no longer seemed
to speak to me.

On reflection, I’m pretty
convinced that opera and 4.48 Psychosis are a match made in hell. Had Venables
written a wildly discordant, frankly horrific piece of music then this might’ve
become something weird and ugly and convincing. As it is, though, the music –
as spicily textured and dynamic as it is – feels too definitive and too
complete for Kane’s writing. Look at the text of Psychosis and it reads like a
poem; there are endless spaces and the words dance about skittishly on the
page. There are none of these gaps in Venables’ composition – except for some
annoying and random bursts of white noise. There’s not enough mystery. It all
makes much too much sense.

There are a few wild and
off-beat moments that work brilliantly; a hint at what might have been. There’s
an orchestral dialogue between a drum and range of improvised instruments,
including a miked up saw, which is threaded into the score. These
‘conversations’ are easily the most expressive moments of the night. The whacky
instruments ping, clatter or boom: ‘Why are you unhappy?’, asks the twanging
pole. The sullen percussionist hammers out a response, as a tumbling beat – the
luring motor of depression – rumbles underneath. These exchanges tremble with
the absurdity that a depressive mind-set brings about and the insistent rhythm
it sets up in your soul – but they also suggest the way that depression can set
the mind free.

These innovations among the
orchestral ensemble really sing – but the singing, well, doesn’t. If you look
at Kane’s text, it’s packed with short and clipped sentences. This is not a
text that asks to be lingered over, but god do these singers wade about in
Kane’s words. ‘Diiiiiiie’ stretches on for a good three syllables and becomes
another, much sillier word. All those clipped phrases – ‘I am fat, I cannot
write, I cannot love’ – are laboured over until they turn away from themselves
completely.

The emotional textures are
seriously off. 4.48 Psychosis is not – to point out the bleeding obvious -
emotionally clear cut. Despite all the sadness and rage buried beneath Kane’s
words, the text is actually pretty neutral for great chunks of the time. 4.48
Psychosis isn’t an explosion. It is, for the most part, an attempt to hold
back. But the emotions in director Ted Huffman’s profoundly naïve production
are horribly explicit. Phrases are delivered in jet-black desperation or
resolute rage. If only Kane had such clarity of thought – but part of the pain
of this play is the confusion and ambiguity that clings to every word. The six
female singers, despite the fracturing that their presence is meant to bring
about, are way too sure of themselves. They sing with full-stops banged down at
the end of every sentence. It’s all horribly blunt and certain – although there
is still a gorgeous intensity to Gweneth-Ann Rand’s and Lucy Schaufer’s
performances in particular.

Finally there is the staging,
which is so lacking in imagination (this is not designer Hannah Clark’s best
moment), that there were points I actually gasped at the blandness of it all.
Director Ted Huffman takes Kane’s text bizarrely literally: the singers talk
about ‘drowning in a state of palsy’ and they actually begin to gasp and drown.
At one point Kane observes that ‘the television talks’ and a TV is duly rolled
onto stage. The singers spend a lot of time sitting at desks, presumably
pretending to visit the doctor. The only visual element of note is Kane’s text,
which is continuously projected against the back wall – but even that becomes
dull. Every once in a while, the doors open and a light shines onto the stage.
It really is quite spectacularly amateurish and looks only to the surface of
Kane’s text. In the final scene, all the various suicide ‘aides’ – a noose and
pills and what have you – are wheeled on to stage. One of the poor singers
climbs up onto a desk and puts the noose around her neck – although god knows
where she’ll be swinging from, since there’s absolutely nothing for her to
attach herself to. It’s an utterly empty gesture, with not a hint of real
threat about it.